Miles in Love - Lois McMaster Bujold [75]
Soudha's a competent engineer. I wonder if he's set the reactor here to destroy itself? was the next inspired thought to enter Miles mind. That would erase all the evidence, Vorsoisson, and Miles, too. If he timed it just right, Soudha might be able to take out the ImpSec rescue squad as well . . . but it seemed Foscol meant the evidence pinned to Vorsoisson's back to survive, at least, which argued against a scenario that would turn the experiment station into a glowing glass hole in the landscape resembling the lost city of Vorkosigan Vashnoi. Soudha and Company did not seem to be thinking militarily. Thank God. This scene seemed engineered for maximum humiliation, and one could not embarrass the dead.
Their next-of-kin, however . . . Miles thought of his father and shuddered. And Ekaterin and Nikolai, and, of course, Lord Auditor Vorthys. Oh, yes.
Vorsoisson, coming to full consciousness at last, reared up and discovered the limits of his bonds. He swore muzzily, then with increasing clarity of expression, yanked his arms against their chains. After about a minute, he stopped. He stared around and found Miles.
"Vorkosigan. What the hell is going on here?"
"We appear to have been parked out of the way while Soudha and his friends finish decamping from the experiment station. They seem to have realized their time had run out." Miles wondered if he ought to mention to Vorsoisson what was taped to his back, then decided against it. The man was already breathing heavily from his struggles. Vorsoisson swore some more, monotonously, but after a bit seemed to become aware that he was repeating himself, and ran down.
"Tell me more about this embezzlement scheme of Soudha's," Miles said into the eerie silence. No insect or bird chirps enlivened the Komarran night, and no tree leaves rustled in the faint, chill breeze. No further sounds came from the buildings behind them. The only noise was the susurration of their breath masks' powered fans, filters, and regulators. "When did you find out about it?"
"Just . . . yesterday. A week ago yesterday. Soudha panicked, I think, and tried to bribe me. I didn't want to embarrass Kat's Uncle Vorthys by blowing it wide open while he was here. And I had to be sure, before I started accusing people right and left."
Foscol says you lie. Miles wasn't sure which of them he trusted least by now. Foscol could have invented her evidence against Vorsoisson using the same skills she had apparently called on to hide Soudha's thefts. He would have to let the ImpSec forensic specialists sort it out, and carefully.
Miles simultaneously sympathized with and was deeply suspicious of Vorsoisson's claimed hesitation, a dizzying state of mind to endure on top of a stunner migraine. He had never thought of fast-penta as a medicine for headache, but he wished he had a hypospray of it to jab in Vorsoisson's ass right now. Later, he promised himself. Without fail. "Is that all that's going on, d'you think?"
"What do you mean, all?"
"I don't quite . . . if I were Soudha and his group, fleeing the scene of our crime . . . they did have some lead time to prepare their retreat. Maybe as long as three or four weeks, if they knew Radovas's body was likely to be found topside." And what the hell was Radovas's body doing up there anyway? I still don't have a clue. "Longer, if they kept their emergency backup plans up to date, and Soudha is an engineer if ever I met one; he's got to have had fail-safes incorporated into his schemes. Wouldn't it make more sense to scatter, travel light, try to get out of the Empire in ones and twos . . . not leave in a bunch with two lift-vans full of . . . whatever the hell they needed two lift-vans to transport? Not their money, surely."
Vorsoisson shook his head, which shifted his breath mask slightly; he had to rub his face against the railing to reseat it. After a few minutes